This invention relates to cabinets housing electronic components, and particularly to gaskets for sealing the doors of such cabinets against ambient conditions, particularly both outdoor weather and electromagnetic radiations.
In telephone networks and the like, a common practice is to house various electronic components within cabinets disposed at sites spaced throughout the network. Many of the cabinets stand in the open and provide the sole protection of the components from the outside weather. For periodic servicing of the housed components, the cabinets are provided with doors. In general, quite adequate gaskets exist for essentially hermetically sealing the doors against outdoor weather conditions when the doors are closed. A problem, however, is that the known weather gaskets are of materials which are transparent to electromagnetic radiations (EMR). For preventing passage of such radiations into and out of the cabinet through the door seals, supplemental electromagnetic shielding gaskets are used.
Originally, two separate gaskets were used, each being individually mounted in place along the cabinet door jamb. Attempts have recently been made, however, to combine the two gaskets into a single gasket, particularly for reducing the labor for mounting the two gaskets in place. U.S. Pat. No. 5,147,121, to McIlwraith, for example, discloses one such composite gasket and briefly summarizes the disclosures of a number of other patents directed to related gaskets (the subject of all these U.S. patents being incorporated herein by reference). The McIlwraith patent describes various shortcomings of the referenced patents and, in turn, it is herein noted that the McIlwraith gasket arrangement is somewhat less than desirable owing to its fairly complicated and expensive structure. Also, based upon actual experience with the McIlwraith gasket, it is relatively fragile and relatively easily broken.
Gaskets according to the present invention are robust in structure, relatively inexpensive, and relatively easily mounted in place.